Windflowers

There were lots of wood anemones at Penstave Woods last week. They have some lovely vernacular names, including windflowers and moggy nightgown. According to Plantlife, moggy nightgown comes from Derbyshire where moggy means mouse, thus mouse’s nightgown. A rusty-back fern growing in a wall:

mid-May sunshine

Greater celandine has appeared this month, a relative of the Welsh poppy and not of lesser celandine. It is named after the Greek ‘chelidon’ or swallow, as it flowers when the swallows arrive. The bright orange sap is said to cure warts and for this reason, greater celandine was often planted around the walls and gateways of houses, where indeed it is still…

March inventory

Linda lent me her camera, which seemed a good excuse to take stock of what is growing between Moorhaven and Green Lane this month. On March 12th 2016, there were the first flowers of golden saxifrage and pink purslane, with a solitary purple and yellow flower of ivy-leaved toadflax that was a bit too small for the…

Spring

Some welcome sunshine this week   From a car, Wrangaton Road is fast and litter-strewn, but the views are lovely and the open verges between Bittaford and Ivybridge station support a different variety of flowers from the shady lane between Moorhaven and Green Lane.   Alexanders is just coming into bloom. Also known as Roman parsley,…

Happy New Year

I am trying to capture in pictures the variety of flowers in a one-mile stretch of south Devon hedgerow from Moorhaven to Green Lane. Today there was winter heliotrope, the first primroses, campions, daisies, bush vetch, herb robert, ivy, bright green new leaves of hedge bedstraw and cow parsley, a rain-soaked celandine, and some small yellow flowers…